


To Be Alone With You

by Shay_Fae



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Full Moon, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Recreational Drug Use, Summer, happy-ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:40:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26384281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shay_Fae/pseuds/Shay_Fae
Summary: In the summer of their sixth year, Remus Lupin tried to kill himself.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 39
Kudos: 298





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> CW for references to an attempted suicide, as well as descriptions of blood and scars.  
> No suicide is attempted within the story, and descriptions are not graphic, but please be careful and cautious if these are triggers for you. My email is in my profile if you'd like more detailed CWs. 
> 
> Title comes from a Sufjan Stevens song of the same name.

Three shadowy figures descended on the front walkway of the Lupin’s cottage. Even in mid-July it was chilly enough in Northern Wales that their robes fluttered around their ankles and all three of the figures seemed to shiver at once. The Lupins lived in the hills by the Irish Sea, a good twenty minute drive away, but the breeze still came in stiff and salty as it whipped around the large oaks that flanked the little brown house, with its unwashed glass windows. 

The three figures left their broomsticks resting against the ancient Ash Beech that had sat in the Lupin’s front yard since Lyall Lupin had been a lad himself and made their way up the crumbling white-brick path, past the old bicycles and the dark-orange Impala with the rusted back wheel. Unconsciously, they walked in size order- the tallest of the three at the head, trying to tame his hair from their windy ride, the shortest at the back, fraying the sleeves of his robes in a nervous habit. At the center walked the figure of middle height, his black hair pulled quickly back that morning into a messy bun, the ripped edges of muggle black jeans peeking out from beneath the hem of his robe. The three had said little since the letter had come just days ago, other than to plan the details of their trip, and they said nothing at all as they came to the dark wooden front door with the unpolished gold knocker and announced themselves.

Hope Lupin opened the door.

“It’s good of you to come,” she said as she let them in, her face betraying a deep exhaustion. “It will be good for him to see you, I’m sure. Lyall’s still away and I’m not great company-”

“You’re the best company, Mrs. Lupin,” James cut in, always the first of them with the right thing to say. “He’s gonna take one look at us and have our ear off for monopolizing you.”

Sirius picked his way through the front room as Hope swatted James away with the barest hint of a smile, and asked Peter for his cloak. The Lupin’s cottage looked the same as it had this time last year, when they’d all come up for Remus’s birthday, every room overflowing with piles of books and blankets, old plush couches with fading velvet lining, and fairy lights inexplicably left up all year round. Hope’s letter hadn’t mentioned where they’d found him and Sirius couldn’t help staring at each sofa, each footstool, as if expecting to see splattered blood or a still-gleaming knife. 

“Where is the rascal?” James asked, hands on his hips. If he was exhausted from flying for four hours that morning, he didn’t show it, just stood there with his usual good-natured grin and his untamed hair. Sirius hoped he looked as casual.

“He’s just upstairs, resting I think,” Hope said, with a tilt of her head towards the rambling staircase at the back of the cabin, that Lyall’s father had allegedly built himself, and where no stair was the same size. “We got back from the hospital late last night.”

“St. Mungo’s?” Peter asked and Hope shook her head.

“Muggle,” she explained. “We try not to go to Mungos, they tend to...complicate things with Remus. And besides, with Lyall away I could hardly operate the floo and Remus was-”

“Makes perfect sense,” James swooped in, setting them all to right, before bounding towards the stairs. “We’ll move quietly, won’t we fellas? Give Moony the gentlest wakeup of his life.”

“You’re good boys,” Hope said, clutching a bit tightly at a house-towel. “Go see if you can get him down for breakfast, I’ll make something nice.”

Sirius didn’t want to go upstairs. Since they’d gotten Hope’s letter, Remus had become- in Sirius’s mind- something of a ghoul, all covered in bleeding sores and bandages. Every time he’d let himself dwell on Remus in the last 72 hours, his stomach had gone a bit funny and he’d been forced to think hard about something else- their quidditch season or Mary’s cryptic letter about her holiday. But James was already halfway up the stairs, Peter close behind him, and so Sirius was forced to follow as they made their way through the narrow hallway covered in framed photographs and layers of carpeting, down to the last room on the left where James did not even bother to knock before bursting in, not half as gentle as he’d promised Hope below.

“Moonykins, are you decent?” James called out as they entered, and Sirius nearly shut his eyes, but inside the room everything was just the same. Remus’s two towering bookshelves with their own overflowing stacks, the desk his Dad had made him covered in scrolls and uncapped inkwells, the window seat with its hidden compartments, and Remus’s neat twin bed where Remus himself sat- awake and dressed in a cream cable-knit, reading from an old tome. He looked up as the three other Marauders tumbled inside, placing a bookmark just inside- a smart habit he’d developed around the pack of them their second year.

“Hullo Prongs,” Remus said, and Sirius could only stare at him. “Wormtail, Padfoot. They let you lot in the country?” 

“We flew in,” Peter was thrilled to explain, coming over to sit on the edge of Remus’s bed as James settled himself in Remus’s desk chair. “Neither of them thought I’d be able to do it- no quidditch muscles they said- but I flew circles around Black. He nearly fell out of the sky twice.”

“Bet he did,” Remus said softly. He looked just the same, from what Sirius could tell. His skin was a bit paler, and the permanent dark circles under his eyes were a bit deeper, but he looked much the way he often did just before the moon. Those dark green eyes that hid a hint of animal yellow met Sirius’s across the small room, and Sirius could only swallow, not even able to summon a greeting. Remus blinked first.

“You didn’t have to come,” Remus murmured, and for a moment Sirius was convinced Remus was speaking just to him, before James chimed in and reminded him they weren’t alone in the room.

“Course we did,” Prongs said brightly. “Heard our little Moony needed a bit of cheering up and what are the Mauraders good for if not a bit of amusing mischief. Sides, it’s just been me and Padfoot all summer. Missed you lot.”

“Don’t be such a girl, Prongs,” Peter teased and Sirius was glad Remus had gone back to watching the others so Sirius could go back to watching him. It was unnerving just how _normal_ he looked. Sirius would have thought the whole letter was a gag, if not for Hope’s face downstairs, her hushed voice, the edge of panic in her letter they’d all gotten three nights ago that had read - _he’s alright now but I think he could really benefit from a little visit once they let us go home-_

“Can you get up, Moony?” Peter said. “Only, I’m absolutely starving and your Mum makes the best fry-up.”

“Get off my feet then, Wormy,” Remus chuckled and as he stood up from the bed in his old acid-washed Levis and stretched just a bit, there at last Sirius saw it- only because he was staring- the very edge of a white-gauze bandage underneath the long sleeves of Remus’s jumper. 

Remus looked up and Sirius was confident he’d been caught, but Remus only put his arms down and tugged the arms of his jumper down just slightly. No one else had noticed, or if they had they were silent about it as James wrapped Remus under his arm in a way that was half play-half wrestling, and pushed him out the door, Peter laughing as he followed and Sirius bringing up the rear this time, not the slightest bit hungry.

Remus was subdued through breakfast, eating just a little whenever Hope caught his eye, but smiling along with the jokes James and Peter were hurling at each other across the table. Sirius was silent through the first half, until James had roped him into getting more pancakes from the stovetop and then cornered him in the kitchen, hissing low enough that none of the others in the dining nook could hear them- “Get it the fuck together, Black.” 

He’d left Sirius alone in the kitchen for a moment after that, and Sirius had breathed deeply into every corner of his lungs before pushing down hard on the edges of his eyes with the heels of his palms and making his way back to the table and joining in on the banter, just a touch too loud, but better than the silent ghost he’d been before. 

After breakfast, Hope had suggested they go for a walk in the massive woods around the property, and Remus had seemed interested in the idea, enough that the four of them had trapsed out to collect some firewood, making plans for a bonfire later that night. 

“Did any of you get your O.W.L.S yet?” Peter asked as they wandered about and Sirius shushed him on instinct.

“No school talk Wormy, we have one rule,” Sirius chastised him, but his heart was barely in it. The woods were dark and cool and Sirius hoped they’d see a rabbit or something small and fluffy that he could shift into Padfoot and give chase to. Even human, he could smell the warmth of the dirt and loam, the dampness of fallen logs and the thick underbrush. It was different to the Forbidden Forest but still the same at the core, the way they both shared the ancient silence expected of a gathering of beings this old.

“I don’t mind, Peter,” Remus said kindly and James came around to throw and arm over Remus’s shoulders, grabbing him in an affectionate headlock.

“Course you don’t, bloody swot,” James teased. Sirius wanted to yell, watching James rough Remus up, didn’t Potter remember that Remus was fragile right now, that he had just recently nearly died, but Remus was laughing as he threw James off of him and tackled him instead around the middle.

“Been working out, Moony?” James huffed as Peter laughed and cheered them on. 

“You’ve just gotten soft,” Remus shot back and it was only Sirius, wasn’t it, who couldn’t figure out how to be normal. They did this all the time in school, wrestled with each other a bit and then let go and kept joking, just as Remus and James were now- helping each other up and moving further into the forest. It was just Sirius being a bit of a girl about the whole thing and somehow he couldn’t stop himself. 

“Can we talk quidditch then?” Peter asked once Sirius had left his own head long enough to join back in.

“We have to; I’ve had no one to yell to about the Harpies new lineup,” James said.

“Well,” Peter shrugged, “I thought it was quite good.”

“Only cause you’re blinded by your lust for Lola Brant.” 

“She’s a brilliant beater!”

“She’s certainly made you one,” Sirius said and they all laughed, even Peter who was turning a bright, splotchy red. James was watching him and Sirius knew he making sure Sirius didn’t fuck this up and he would love to, honestly Prongs, if he only fucking knew how.

A rabbit, sent by god Sirius was sure, hopped across the empty space in front of them and Sirius was blindingly grateful to shift into Padfoot and his canine brain that didn’t have space for guilt or shame or nervousness, too busy cataloging the scent of _game, prey._

“Oh Padfoot, don’t,” Remus said but he was laughing still, and he laughed even harder when Padfoot put his paws up on his chest and licked across Moony’s cheek before bounding off after the rabbit.

“Don’t kill it, you mutt,” James called after him. “I don’t fancy helping you pick fur out of your teeth. Not again.”

Padfoot turned around to pant at them and with his canine eyes he did his best to wink before running off. 

They made a bonfire in the end, after a brilliant dinner of Hope’s kidney pie. She’d let them take a case of beer and an old bottle of Lyall’s whiskey out with them to the backyard, making them promise to bank the fire before they went to bed. Sirius was still a bit muddy from where Padfoot had jumped in a puddle and brought out a good stick for fetching, but he didn’t mind. It had reset him, the way he’d hoped it would, and he could joke around with James and Peter again- fantasizing about a prank they could pull with some of the Forbidden Forest rabbits and mocking James for the Howler Lily had sent last week.

“Do you reckon it’s a good sign, yeah?” James was asking hopefully even as Remus was shaking his head, holding a can in both hands.

“Do we think a Howler means she’s changing her mind about you?” he asked. “Potter, do you hear yourself?”

“It means she’s thinking about me!” James insisted and Sirius had heard this argument a thousand ways since the Howler had landed on the Potters’ kitchen table a few days back. “Otherwise, why would she have sent it?”

“Because she hates you.”

“She lives with muggles, Moony! They don’t just have Howlers laying around. She had to order one special, or maybe even go into Diagon just to get it-”

“So she’s dedicated to how much she hates you,” Remus said in the same deadpan and Sirius snorted into his glass of whiskey. Remus glanced over at him and Sirius couldn’t help that there was still something lingering between them, something he still couldn’t ‘get together,’ no matter how badly he wanted to.

It had been odd between him and Moony all year, if he was being honest about it. Ever since Halloween, when Sirius had led Remus up to the dorms to show him what he, James, and Peter had been working on all summer. Remus hadn’t cried when they’d shifted into their animagus forms but it had been a near thing, and he’d hugged them for longer than he’d ever let any of them touch him before.

 _How the hell did you pull this off?_ Remus had asked, still holding his hands over his mouth. _And without my help?_

 _It was all Sirius_ Peter had said, nearly vibrating out of his skin with excitement. _He came up with the idea-_

 _James got the mandrake-_ Sirius had said, not wanting to hog the glory but reveling in how happy Remus looked, how proud he was that they’d done it and not died and not gotten stuck as animals or as half-creatures somewhere along the way.

 _-yeah but Sirius figured out the spell, don’t be modest Black-_ James said and maybe that was when Remus had started treating him differently. 

Sirius hadn’t noticed for a while. Remus would go quiet, sometimes, when Sirius would sit down, but Remus had always been the quietest of them, the steadiest, the one who knew how to wait until what he said really mattered. Remus would watch him and Sirius would assume he was doing something stupid, or about to at any rate. But slowly this thing had begun to grow between them, something Sirius hoped Remus had a handle on because he sure didn’t. 

Whereas before when there had been chaos and terror in his brain, Sirius would have snuck into James’s bed for a late-night conference, now he found himself seeking out Remus- just to sit besides him on the common room couch in silence. Remus would be reading a book and Sirius would see himself, as if outside his own body, drifting over to hover at Remus’s shoulder and ask about it, let Remus lend it to him, crawl into the curtains of Remus’s bed after lights-out to strike a quick Lumos and discuss his thoughts on it with Remus until nearly morning. Whereas before they had all been best friends but James had been Sirius’s brother, the keeper of all his secrets, now Sirius found himself saving his quiet moods, his steady gaze, for Remus- searching him out alone and spending time just the two of them while James was at quidditch or Peter was at tutoring.

Maybe it was because now they knew Sirius was a dog and Remus was a wolf- they were pack in ways the other two couldn’t quite be. But if Sirius looked at it head-on, he knew that wasn’t the reason. Remus had begun to take him- and there was no other word for it- more seriously since Halloween, had begun to carve out space and time in his vast walls of secrets for just Sirius to inhabit. Neither one of them talked about it, neither one of them acknowledged it was happening. Sirius did not even mention it to James, though he was sure James knew and had thoughts. But if James was his brother, Sirius had begun to think of Remus as his mirror, his island. Something they could only give to each other that James and Peter just weren’t a part of.

Through the bonfire now, Sirius watched Remus and wondered how long he’d been thinking about killing himself. Had he been planning it all year? Had Remus sat with Sirius in what Sirius had thought of as patient silence- the two of them on opposite sides of the common room couch with their feet a tangle in the middle- and been plotting how best to die? In those ethereal, wandlit nights atop Remus’s bed covers when they’d whispered about Whitman and Thoreau and Ginsburg and the kind of poetry Sirius had always said was girly but now that he was actually reading it felt like it had been ripped right out of his veins, those nights when they’d shared very little that could be construed as personal and yet Sirius felt like he was in the presence of someone who knew all his secrets, had Remus been thinking of knives, of wrists, of soft skin and never speaking to Sirius again?

Had none of it mattered, Sirius thought as he sipped and tried not to stare at Remus, bundled up in a cardigan against the cold night air. Or had Sirius somehow even been the reason?

Sirius awoke in the middle of the night with the profound sense that something was wrong. They had all lingered around the fire until nearly two before crawling up to bed- exhausted from the long flight that morning. Remus’s bed had been big enough for just one of them and Peter had happily taken the spot after James had volunteered himself and Sirius for the mattress on the floor. It was on the floor now that Sirius found himself alert, with Peter’s soft snores filling the room, and James beside him, sleeping as the dead. Letting his eyes adjust to the darkness, Sirius sat up and looked automatically towards the bed to find just one lump. Remus wasn’t there.

Panic flooded through him so quickly, Sirius felt dizzy. As silently as he could, he crawled off of the mattress and found a shirt on the floor, grabbing it as he padded his way out of the room. 

The images in his head were overwhelming- Remus hanging in the hallway closet from his belt loops, Remus lying in the bathtub with bleeding wrists, Remus on the living room floor with his head in the fireplace. But each search of the closet, bathroom, and front room yielded no Remus. Just as Sirius was ready to give in and wake the others, he spotted, through the glass windows above the kitchen sink, a small glowing ember of light bobbing about in the backyard. 

He found Remus sitting on the larger stones at the edge of the property, a lit joint in his hand and the smell of weed a cushion around his head. Sirius said nothing as he walked down from the house to the outcropping, footsteps muffled in the wet grass, and Remus never turned his head from where he was staring out at the clustered trees that began the forest, but still somehow he noticed Sirius enough to say “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“Just can’t sleep,” Sirius said, sitting down on a stone near enough that he could be passed the joint, but still far enough in the pervasive darkness of the countryside that Remus was a little more than an outline. Light or not, Sirius could feel Remus watching him as he took the offered joint, their hands brushing slightly, and inhaled against the cold Welsh air.

“That’s my shirt,” Remus said, after Sirius had taken his two puffs and passed the joint back. His voice was rough in a way that meant he’d been smoking for ages, and Sirius pulled self-consciously at the tee. He didn’t ask how Remus knew- they all mocked Moony for his “night vision” and made use of it at the same time. Or, Sirius thought, maybe I just smell like him now.

“Grabbed something in the dark, sorry.”

“You know it’s fine,” Remus said and they were silent after that for several long minutes, watching the dark shadows of the tree and the bright stars doing their best to shine through an overcast sky. 

Sirius could feel the high set into his bones slowly, his skin growing warm as tiredness crept up on him. They’d had a few nights like this between them back at school. Normally the four smoked together as they did everything together but on nights before quidditch games when James refused to ‘mess with his lungs’ or nights when Peter was off snogging Dorcas in the supply closet by the kitchens, Sirius would climb out onto the little ledge of Gryffindor tower after Remus and they’d share a cigarette or a spliff between them and watch the quiet of Hogwarts hum itself present. 

“You alright?” Remus asked suddenly, and Sirius was back in his own body, taking one last hit before handing the roach to Remus for him to finish. Remus was the most dedicated of any of them about getting even the ashed ends out of a joint. 

“Yeah, just thinking,” Sirius said. James would have pressed, Peter wouldn’t even have thought to ask, but Remus just took it for what it was, trusting Sirius to say more if he wanted to.

“When did you get to James’s?”

“First week of July,” Sirius said. He’d made his obligatory stop-in at home but despite planning to give his parents at least a week, he’d barely made it four days. “I don’t know...I don’t think I can keep going back there.”

Remus, bless him, did not comment on the slight shake in Sirius's voice, but instead fished another joint out from behind his ear and lit it, offering it to Sirius as soon as he'd gotten it started. Sirius let the motion of it- holding, breathing, releasing- set into his body, deliberately not thinking of his mother, or of Regulus's eyes watching from the hallway as Sirius had taken his still-packed trunk and snuck out. 

“What are you going to do instead?” Remus asked after awhile, a whisper in the night.

“Potters said I could stay if I needed to,” Sirius said. James’s dad had actually opened the door to see Sirius’s black eye and said he was going to burn down Grimmauld Place himself but it amounted to the same. 

“You should probably believe them,” said Remus, he who knew better than anyone the ways Sirius refused to take help if he could manage, who insisted everything was fine at home- just not to his liking. Another shared thing between them that didn’t need to be spoken to. 

“Probably should,” Sirius said and they smoked for a while in quiet, each thinking their own great mysteries. If he had been sober, Sirius would have been watching Remus as before but he didn’t have the energy now and, stoned as he was, it was easiest just to slip back into how he knew to act next to Remus in their quiet times. He wondered if he was the only person to really know Remus like this, the Remus he was when no one was watching, and the thought curled and twisted low in his belly, made him smile just slightly into the darkness as he ran his fingers up and across his own arms. 

“Have you heard from Mary?” Remus asked suddenly, and Sirius didn’t hide his surprise. Remus never asked about Mary; the few times Sirius had stumbled back late to the dorm with his hair all messed and a wicked grin, both James and Peter had descended with teenage glee to hear the details but Moony had always sat just apart, listening but asking no questions.

Still, Sirius didn’t mind sharing. “She wrote me an odd letter,” he said. “Showed it to James and he can’t suss it out either but he thinks it means she’s done with me.” 

“What led him to such a shocking conclusion?” Remus asked.

“Well, she wrote that she did a bunch of thinking on holiday and figures we’re better as friends,” Sirius confessed but he paused to let Remus laugh at him. 

“Truly full of hidden meanings,” Remus mocked him and it was absurd how good this felt, to be normal together like this again, Remus making fun of him and Sirius laughing right along. Something odd clung around the edges of it, something about the twisting of Sirius’s gut watching Remus in the moon or in the way Remus looked as if he was just barely holding back a great sadness in his eyes, but Sirius figured it was just the timing or the terrible secret of what had happened four days ago sitting between them. Now, in the soothing cadence of their banter, he was too grateful to care.

“It doesn’t make any sense though!” Sirius objected, even though Mary’s letter had left him more confused than hurt. “What could I have done to upset her enough to break it off when we’re not even in the same country?”

“Maybe she met someone on holiday,” Remus suggested. “She went to Nice, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Sirius said. “James reckoned the same.”

“Sorry Pads,” Remus said but Sirius shook his head.

“It’s alright, honest. I was thinking of calling it off myself.”

“Course you were.”

“Shut up,” Sirius said and he smiled at Remus in the dark. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you’ve been hogging the spliff for ages.”

They made it through the joint before sleepiness finally eased its way into their skin and they stumbled back to the cottage, giggling slightly as they tripped over a living room chair and shushing each other uselessly. Remus led them to get glasses of water from the silent kitchen and they drank by the soft stove light, careful not to catch each other's eyes or they’d descend into poorly-muffled laughter again. Sirius snagged a biscuit but Remus put the plate away before they could be lost entirely to their munchies. In a show of immense generosity he thought, Sirius split the biscuit with Remus- trying to stay silent as the lemon-sugar melted in their mouths.

At the doorway to Remus’s bedroom, Remus looked over at Sirius and touched his elbow in a gesture so unusual that Sirius could make no sense of it. Still, he nodded like he understood and they ducked inside to shed their jeans before climbing into their respective beds, each one carefully not watching the other. In his final moments of wakefulness, Sirius turned over to see the lump that was Remus breath deeply on the bed, upsetting the sheets, and something about the sight of it finally allowed him to fall asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for blood, descriptions of injuries

They found a rhythm in the days that followed: hiking through the forest and playing quidditch in the backyard, chess or exploding snap in the living room when it rained. Hope kept them well-supplied in baked goods and roasted meats and Lyall, without his knowledge, lent his stock of beer and cheap whiskey from the cottage basement. It felt much like any other summer, the four of them waking up late and going to sleep later, making as much or as little as they wanted to from the day. So much so that it felt easy enough to forget why they had come. Remus wore long sleeves even on the hottest days, but that wasn’t unusual. It had taken well into fourth year before Remus had stopped changing in the bathroom and yes, last summer he’d eventually consented to come swimming with them, but a buttoned-up Moony was hardly a beacon of disaster.

Still, Sirius couldn’t help but watch. What he was looking for, he couldn’t say- a tearful outburst, a repeat occurrence- something exceptionally un-Remus like. He watched Remus play beater and climb the old beech tree and make raspberry tarts with flour on his cheek and waited for something to slip. Everything had changed, after all, the fundamental rules of their universe had been upheaved and yet no one was acting any differently, no one seemed to realize that they had all almost lost everything except, it seemed, for Sirius. 

It did not help that every night after the others had gone to sleep, Sirius would lie awake until he heard the rustling sounds of Remus making his way out of the bedroom. After that first night, Sirius would wait a bit, five or ten minutes, before creeping his way downstairs just the same and padding out to Remus on the edge of the property. 

Remus never asked, only offered him the ever-present spliff, and together they’d smoke their way through an hour or so. They talked a little- of Lyall’s travels and of Regulus’s new friends- but more often they were quiet. Remus-and-Sirius quiet, as Sirius called it in his mind- a different sort of silence than the kind he could have with James or Peter. The kind they had carved out together in school before everything, apparently, had gone wrong. But no matter how much he smoked, Sirius still felt that unexamined whipcord of tension thrumming through his body every time he looked over in the darkness to find Remus looking back. It hit somewhere in the depth of his belly and the curl of his toes and the only cure was to say something silly or profound or a mix of both so Remus would laugh or shake his head but most importantly stop staring at Sirius as if he knew what was going on and was just waiting for Sirius to catch up.

“Do you think dogs have their own kind of dog philosophy?” Sirius would try, or “If you weren’t a bloke, which of the Beatles would you shag?” and Remus would smile at him in the darkness- a smile Sirius could barely see save for the light of the moon off Remus’s teeth- and he would wait a bit as if he knew Sirius was shivering in his palms just watching him, before he’d say, “I think dogs are too smart for philosophy,” or “Definitely George.”

And sometimes in the oven light of the kitchen at two or three or four in the morning, the two of them sharing the last piece of banoffee pie and trying to keep from waking the others with the sound of the tap or their poorly-muffled laughter, Sirius would look at Remus from the corner of his eye and feel like he was being lit on fire. 

It was loss, he thought, or fear. It was knowing what could have been but wasn’t. It was watching Remus get custard on his chin, his eyes rimmed-red and half-lidded, and wanting to touch the softest place on his neck- just to check if he was breathing. It was something more terrifying than all of that together. 

  
  


They were at the Lupins for a little less than a week before they woke on the morning of the full moon. They had known it was coming, of course, all four of them had passed the lunar charting section of Astronomy with the highest marks school-wide and Sirius was vaguely sure that if awoken in the middle of the night, he could have told you what phase the moon was in right then. They had always planned to spend it together, and it was jarring to remember why they had come to the Lupins earlier than they’d scheduled, to have to hold the unspoken thing that had happened between them again. 

Sirius hadn’t thought about what they would tell Hope-they hadn’t had this issue last summer- but Remus assured them his mother knew so little about the wizarding world that she’d have no idea that it wasn’t simply something wizards could do all the time, changing themselves into animals as easily as muggles changed clothes. And, indeed, when James explained to Hope at lunch that they planned to spend the moon with Remus as a pack, she was nothing but delighted, asking them to shift for her and exclaiming a startled “oh” as James became a stag in the dining room and his antlers knocked against the hanging ceiling lights. 

As the day wore on, Moony became more and more restless, unable to stay inside, wandering around the edge of the property in a nervous pace. They played a bit of quidditch but soon Moony’s arms hurt too much to throw the quaffle and his legs shook against the side of his broom. They landed and headed back inside to drink a little tea before the sun began to set and it was time to get walking. Remus wanted them at least a mile from the cottage and from Hope, and they switched off running and walking it until it was nearly moonrise and Remus’s joints hurt too much to keep moving.

Peter fished out a cigarette from his pocket and Remus took it gratefully, the tobacco doing little to relax him but the motion still soothing as Remus grew more and more uncomfortable before he finally said “change.”

Sirius had never seen Moony emerge through human eyes- to Padfoot it looked horrible enough, Moony shifting and shedding his skin, howling in his human throat before it became a wolf’s howl that Padfoot was happy to be a part of. The wolf had gold eyes and it looked at Padfoot with a frightening intensity. Padfoot remembered the first time he’d met the wolf, the way the two had wrestled for dominance before the wolf had won, Padfoot turning over to bare his belly and panting happily, utterly trusting. Prongs had taken longer to warm up to the wolf, and the wolf to him, and neither the wolf nor Wormtail truly trusted each other but they got along well enough. The wolf knew the rat was clever and helpful, and that the stag was powerful- which the wolf respected. But the hound was the wolf’s friend and they were always happy to see each other after two months apart, tussling and nipping at each other until Prongs butted in and spurred them on to run. 

It was utter brilliance, Padfoot knew, to be able to run like this. At school they couldn’t stray too far, had to time themselves to make sure they could always get Moony back in the shack and themselves back to the castle before Pomfrey came with the sunrise to check on Remus. But out in the woods there was no class schedule, no matron appointment to time themselves by, just the thrill of the hunt and the strength of their own legs.

They ran through the woods the four had spent days exploring but they looked so different through Padfoot’s eyes, in the thrill of the moon. Moony knew places as the wolf he didn’t know as Remus, and he was anxious to show Padfoot, Prongs, and Wormtail, leading them out to badger dens and hidden brooks. 

Padfoot splashed into the cold night water, chasing his own wet tail, and as the wolf led them in another, brilliant howl, Padfoot was sure he’d never felt so gloriously alive.

  
  


Sirius woke with the sunrise to find himself face-down in overgrown grass. He kept his consciousness as Pads and his memory, unlike Moony, but with a night so long it was easy to lose pieces of it, especially the end as they all grew tired from hours of running and hunting. With an almighty groan, Sirius crawled to his knees before looking around the field for the others, squinting against the terrible brightness of the morning sun.

Peter was a bit away, curled up on himself and moaning a bit but not too badly off. Sirius found James already sitting up, wiping at a bit of matted blood in his hair- he’d gorged a badger, Sirius remembered, and it had gotten all over his antlers. Their eyes met now and they both stumbled up to look for Remus. Sirius was too tired and worn out to feel fear, or indeed to feel anything but his own exhaustion, so he wasn’t worried at all when they found Remus a few yards over, face down as Sirius had been and quite still.

When Remus changed back he was naked, unlike an animagus transformation, and so James and Sirius politely tried not to look as they crouched down to flip Remus over and make sure he was okay. They were practiced from nearly a year’s-worth of transformations together and so Sirius could not explain why, when they turned Remus over, he couldn’t help but let his eyes linger on the scarred skin of Remus’s belly, the long stretch of Remuses’s neck down to his left nipple, which had been sliced in half from a transformation years before he’d met them. Something swooped low in his stomach as Sirius stared and so he was distracted when James said, “Oh my god.”

Sirius, despite his staring, hadn’t yet noticed the bloody grass- or he’d noticed but hadn’t thought much of it, there was often blood around after they’d run together- but he saw now the cause. On each of Remus’s thin, white wrists, there were two long and deep cuts that stretched from the base of the palm up a third of Remus’s forearm. They’d been stitched days ago, and had clearly been healing, but something in the night-maybe their running, maybe the skin-tug of the transformation- had torn the stitches right out and they had begun to bleed sluggishly again, staining Remus’s arms and the grass and shocking bright red.

“Fuck,” Sirius said, and he sunk down next to a still-unconscious Remus, his heart a panicked flutter in his throat. “Fuck, fuck- do you have your wand?”

“We can’t do magic outside of school-” James said and Sirius cut him off.

“Who gives a shit, we have to do something-”

“If we do any magic, they ministry will send someone,” James tried to explain, ever the rational one when a prank went wrong. “He’s not registered, Pads, they’ll figure it out in seconds-”

“What the fuck do we do, he’s fucking bleeding,” Sirius was aware he was barely breathing, nearly choking, and James took his head in his own, big hands, and forced Sirius to look away from the wounds and into his eyes. 

“Pads, he’s okay I think,” James said, hands steady, voice firm. “They were nearly healed, I think he just ripped a few of the stitches. Look, it’s not a lot of blood.”

James let go of his head then, and Sirius looked back down, taking Remus’s wrist in his hands and wiping away at the blood to better see. It was no question that these cuts had once been deep enough to seriously hurt- deep enough to kill, Sirius’s mind would not shut up, would not stop imagining- but now James was right, the wounds were shallow and nearly healed- werewolf healing magic- and would likely close up on their own in an hour or two. Sirius himself had gotten a worse cut than this playing quidditch yesterday. 

“I got-” Sirius gasped, watching drops of blood ooze their way out of the cut and into Sirius’s palm, “I was just scared, I thought-”

“I know,” James said, and Sirius saw the same hunted look in his eyes that he knew he wore himself before James blinked and shifted, already thinking ahead.

“You can’t let him see you like that,” James ordered. “It’ll make him uncomfortable, if he thinks we-”

“Yeah-”

“Where’s his coat?” James asked, and they had made some attempt, towards the end of the moon, to head back towards the cabin but Sirius was still unsure where exactly they were. Sirius shook his head. 

James instead took his own jumper off, wrapping Remus in it and it was a good thing it was already red, Sirius thought a bit hysterically, as they covered the bleeding wrists. 

“Go get Peter,” James said and Sirius rushed to obey, knowing without discussing it that James was right, that Sirius and his panicked eyes should be nowhere nearby as James gently woke Remus up. He could hear James across the field, joking that Remus had run them all ragged, as Sirius knelt besides Peter and checked he was okay besides a little nausea from a night riding around in Prong’s antlers. If Sirius really listened, he could even hear Remus laughing back, his voice shot to hell from howling, as he let James help him up and the four of them limped back towards the cottage. 

It was all Sirius could think about. 

After they’d come home to where Hope was waiting for them wrapped up in a dressing gown, mugs of tea steaming on the breakfast table, smiling all the way to her eyes when she saw Remus alive and in good cheer, all Sirius could think about was how red Remus’s blood had been, how some of it was still now crusted on Sirius’s own palm. After Remus had been given the honor of the first shower and had come downstairs with his hair wet in his own clothes, the edge of new, clean, white gauze just poking down below his sleeve, all Sirius could stare at was where Remus’s arms had pressed against James’s jumper after they’d forced him into it, leaving them damp and clotted. After Sirius finally took his own shower and stood beneath the spray, all he could do was watch the delicate skin of his own wrists twist and tug and feel tender and thin beneath his fingertips. 

He knew he was too silent at breakfast, but they all were exhausted and it was easy to pretend that was the reason. The four of them trooped upstairs to nap soon after eating and Sirius wanted nothing more than to fall asleep but it was all that hid behind his eyelids, the awful proof that he had spent the last four days joking and drinking and smoking to forget. 

Remus had almost died. Remus had wanted to die. 

Peter woke around two and was happy to play exploding snap with Sirius until James joined them around four. They had to wake Remus at six for dinner and Sirius could hardly look at him across the table, rumpled in the clothes he’d fallen asleep in and devouring anything left in front of him for too long. Sirius wanted to scream, he wasn’t sure what he wanted at all, but he knew he didn’t want to sit here and laugh with Hope about how they’d eat her out of house and home like Remus hadn’t almost not been there at all and none of them would have been able to fix it.

The four of them fought valiantly to have something of an evening, playing chess and cards, but they were all still exhausted and at just past ten, James stood up and announced he was going to sleep and they all gratefully followed his lead. Sirius himself went through all the motions, brushing his teeth and pulling on a sleep-shirt, but he knew even before he laid down that sleep would not come. His mind was a nasty pit, reminding him lest he could possibly forget of that morning in vivid technicolor, the same image over and over until he thought he would be sick with it, until he could have sworn he felt the wetness of Remus’s blood on his fingers against his face.

It was a surprise to hear Remus, nearly two hours after the others had drifted off, climb out of bed and through the bedroom door. Sirius had been sure Moony would at least sleep through the night; after the moon he was a bit of a zombie for a day or two. But as much as talking to Remus felt impossible right now, lying awake until sunrise alone felt impossibly worse, and so Sirius only waited a minute before following after Remus into the back garden.

Remus had just settled onto his rock when Sirius arrived and he looked up with wide eyes.

“Figured you’d be too tired tonight,” Remus said, watching Sirius clamber up onto his own rock and offering him the first hit.

“Took a long nap,” Sirius lied and he could tell Remus knew he was lying, which was why it felt okay. Weed was a relief from the anxious shuffling of his own mind, and he lingered with the joint for a breath too long before passing it back.

“Was it a good moon?” Remus asked, the way he often asked morning of in the hospital wing, or night after in the quiet of their dorm.

“It was,” Sirius said, trying to think only of how good it had been to run, how free he had felt with the love of his pack behind him. “Prongs got a badger.”

“Did he eat it?” Remus laughed and Sirius shook his head, smiling at the memory.

“No, but you tried to. I had to chase you off or you’d’ve been sick all day.”

“Many thanks,” Remus said. “Anyone get hurt?”

No, Sirius tried to say, but the words would not come. You were bleeding this morning, he wanted to yell, you were bleeding and I was so scared and you did that to yourself, but instead Sirius managed, “Wormy got motion-sick.”

“Poor Worm,” Remus agreed and they smoked through the rest of the joint in exhausted silence. Time passed differently out in the darkness, in waves and in degrees. Sirius let the weed take him somewhere else, somewhere softer in his mind, and he watched the moon- still hauntingly full- and tried to remember how good it had felt to wrestle with Moony in the grass last night, the wolf a good stone larger but the hound more determined, how he’d scrapped his teeth against the wolf’s ruff and they’d both howled to the hanging orb until Prongs had urged them back into a run. It always felt good to wrestle with Remus but last night had felt like a release- right until it had been ruined- the blind strength that Moony held hidden in his legs and paws, the glint of his teeth always surprising, always electric.

Sirius looked over at Remus and found him rolling another joint, his pale fingers working quickly in the moonlight. Something about his movements, the way the faint light hit Remus’s face and the flash of his teeth as he bit as his tongue in concentration, set Sirius on edge- made his skin feel too tight. It was the same swoop at the pit of his stomach that Sirius had felt that morning when they’d turned Remus over, right before they discovered the cuts. It terrified him, and in his terror he blurted out the first thing that came to his mind, just to kill the silent tension that weighed down the air between them.

“Christ, Lupin. Where did you get all this weed from?” Sirius said, hating the way his voice echoed around the back garden but needing to speak, to do anything at all but just sit here and stare at Remus until it filled him. “You’re never this flush back at school.”

“My mum,” Remus chuckled a bit, licking the flap of the paper and rolling it into a neat, perfect cylinder.

“Didn’t take your mum for a holy roller,” Sirius said, partly just to shut up his own thoughts, and Remus paused as he flicked the lighter and let the edge of the joint catch fire, breathing in deeply and letting out a neat stream of smoke. Remus smoked more neatly than anyone Sirius knew.

“She’s not, she... she er-” Remus said, pulling at the joint between his stammers, making the face Sirius knew from experience meant he was deciding whether to share something. “While I was under observation, she asked me if there was something she could get me at home that would make things...easier.”

Sirius wanted nothing more than for Remus to stop talking, now that it was clear exactly where this tory was going, but he had asked, he had set them on this path, and now it was his punishment to listen, wasn’t it? To be forced to imagine Remus in a white hospital gown, his skin sallow the way it looked in the hospital wing after particularly bad moons. To look back further at the scene Sirius had been avoiding but could now put face and body too, Remus bleeding like he had this morning- wrists slashed up and leaking, Remus crying-

“I was on a lot of sedatives, pain meds and shit and I guess I asked for pot,” Remus was trying to explain but Sirius was only half there, holding himself to reality with a desperate grip on the edges of his rock. “But she took me seriously, bless her, and I came home to an ounce, Black, a fucking jar of it-”

“Why’d you do it?” Sirius asked and he only realized he was asking after the sentence was out of his mouth. Remus shut up immediately, staring at Sirius with his mouth just slightly open, joint forgotten in his right hand. Even the woods seemed silent, as if the crickets and the cicadas were just as shocked and horrified at Sirius’s daring. Sirius wanted to retract the question, to bluster on and swear it wasn’t important, but he found he couldn’t speak. All he could do was stare and sit in the vacuum left by his voice.

Remus slowly let out a breath he must have been holding, still watching Sirius. He laughed, a bit awkwardly, and then leaned forward to offer Sirius the joint. Sirius took it on autopilot, watching him back, and as he lifted it to his mouth and inhaled, Remus tried to speak.

“Christ Pads- it’s not-” Remus started and stopped and still Sirius could not say a word. James would kill him if he knew, Sirius thought wildly, James would beat him for even asking but the question had been haunting his vocal cords since they’d stepped foot on the Lupin’s property and it was frankly, Sirius figured, a bloody miracle he hadn’t asked sooner- all of which did not solve the way Remus was looking at him now, as if he couldn’t quite believe Sirius had had the fucking guts.

They waited in silence for one of them to break and, eventually, Remus did. 

“June’s moon was...difficult,” he said and Sirius’s voice returned to him all at once as he blurted out-

“We’re so sorry, Moony-”

“It wasn’t anyone’s fault,” Remus said firmly, but just thinking about it made Sirius sick with grief. The last full moon had come nearly at the end of June, two days after term ended and the day after all students were meant to head home on the Hogwarts Express. Dumbledore and Pomfrey had decided it made the most sense for Remus to stay an extra day and see the moon out at Hogwarts, which had been very logical and reasonable, and there had been absolutely no logical or reasonable explanation that James, Sirius, and Peter could have given as to why they should stay on an extra day as well. They had certainly tried, arguing moral support, but Dumbledore reminded them that Remus would be in the shack all night and in the hospital wing all morning asleep, quite unable to see them. Short of confessing their animagus status, there had been nothing they could do, and so on the morning of the moon Remus had walked the three of them down to get the carriages, waving at them with a smile they all knew was forced and promising he’d be fine. That had been the image haunting Sirius all summer- right up until it had been replaced with a much worse scene- Remus with his arms crossed in front of his chest, watching his friends retreat out of sight, his mouth set in a hard line. 

“The wolf had, I don’t know, gotten used to having company I guess,” Remus tried to explain. “I had to stay at Hogwarts a few extra days-”

“You never said-”

“There wasn’t anything you could do,” Remus interrupted. “Sides, I was unconscious for most of it. But the pain was...bad.”

From Remus, who regularly hid how much he was hurting and who Sirius had once seen try to pass off a broken arm as a sprain, that alone was an admission of unimaginable suffering.

“Moony-” Sirius started, unconsciously, but Remus would not look at him.

“I got in my head about it,” he said softly. “Thinking about doing that again and again for the rest of my life. Poppy told me once it’s only going to get worse, you know, as I get older and the wolf gets bigger. I could just see my life then, month after month, waking up unable to walk or talk or breath for days at a time and I didn’t want, I don’t think-”

“But it was just the once!” Sirius cut him off, a bit desperately. In his hand the joint had burnt itself out but he hadn’t noticed. “I’m sorry it was awful Moony, I really am, we all wanted to be there with you, but it’s not gonna happen again! We were there this month, and we’ll be together in August and the whole year, and maybe it’ll fall out like that again once or twice but we’ve only got two more years until we graduate and we won’t have a term schedule or anything and it’ll be easy to spend it together-”

Sirius paused because Remus was laughing. It was the way he’d laughed when he’d had to quit the quidditch team their second year because he kept missing practices after the moon, the same way he’d laughed later that term when James had blurted out, _We know Remus, we figured it out_. It made Sirius shiver.

“I don’t see why this is so funny-” Sirius bristled, refusing to start crying, and Remus in the dark shook his head.

“You’re a child, Sirius,” he said, and it was the last thing Sirius expected him to say.

“Fuck off-”

“I don’t mean it badly,” Remus said. “We’re supposed to be children, right now. And it’s sweet, it really is, that you want to make those kinds of promises. You and James and Peter have been...kinder to me than I thought anyone ever would be, than I frankly have a right to, but you’re making promises you can’t keep.”

“Don’t tell me,” Sirius ground out, and his hands were shaking, his voice nearly cracking with the strain, “what promises I can and can’t make-”

“You have a life, Sirius, that is not about me,” Remus cut him off. “You all do. And it’s fun now, it’s a great lark, to go running about with a dark creature once a month but in five years from now? Hell, in three? When you have a job and a girlfriend and a whole life to live? When you’re thirty and you’ve got two kids?”

“Yes, fuck you,” Sirius bit off. “Yes we fucking will, you bastard. Do you think we don’t know how serious this is? I kept a goddamn mandrake leaf in my mouth for a month- a month- and we almost got _expelled_ stealing that fucking hawkmoth and it was worth it because this means something to us-”

“You did it because you could,” Remus said, his voice acidic and cruel. “You love to see what you can do, to push boundaries just because you can, and it’s brilliant to watch but don’t pretend it has anything to do with me.”

“Stop being such a bloody martyr all the time-”

“I’m not being anything, this is my fucking life,” Remus said and they were shouting now, their voices echoing in the empty woods. Sirius was sure they were far enough away from the cabin to not wake anyone but still his blood was buzzing with fear. 

“You have no idea,” Remus said and he’d lowered his voice, evidently just as nervous about the house, but Sirius could see him clenching his teeth, much the way the wolf bared his fangs when Padfoot and Prongs would try and keep him reined in as they ran through the Forbidden Forest. “No idea what it is like to live like this, to know this is the rest of your life. This isn’t a prank, or a bit of mischief, I can’t get _bored_ of this, or decide I’m too busy this month- it’s relentless just relentless agony and I’m so tired of it, I’m fucking exhausted, and I’m only sixteen I’ve been doing this ten years and I’m already done, so forgive me if maybe I don’t want to be thirty and homeless because I can’t get a goddamn job and with my bones all poorly reset seeing the moon out alone month after month-”

“Stop saying you’re alone!” Sirius said and he couldn’t help yelling, it seemed the only way to break through the absolute horrors that kept spilling out of Remus’s mouth. “Stop telling me I won’t be there because I will, I promise you-”

“I’m not the bloody center of your world, Black-”

“Yes you are!” Sirius shouted and the silence that followed was thick enough to suffocate.

Remus stared at him and Sirius hated how dark it was, how it was impossible to see what Remus was thinking in his eyes or his mouth, but maybe that was best, as the seconds ticked on and Remus said nothing at all, only kept looking at Sirius. Sirius’s whole skin felt tight and if he stayed on this silent rock a second longer he’d start crying, he knew it, and just then Remus broke his gaze, turning away to stare at the silent forest so it was just Sirius sitting alone on his rock, his whole body shaking, and he profoundly did not want to be himself anymore. 

Remus said nothing as Sirius shifted into Padfoot, leaping from the stone and bolting into the darkness. Padfoot had no room in his small, canine brain for guilt, for shame, for terror that he’d ruined absolutely everything that was good in his life. He only knew safe and not safe, and being near Moony right now did not feel safe so he ran off, tongue lolling out of his mouth, towards the shallow part of the woods where the Lupins grew carrots and gourds in the fall, and there in a soft patch of dirt he curled up on himself and chewed on his tail until he fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> September is Suicide Prevention Month. I don't have anything smart or profound to say but if you're having suicidal thoughts you are far from alone. Staying alive is a daily practice in which every moment is a victory. Be proud of yourself and be kind to yourself. Someone is glad you're alive- be it your friends, the stay cat you feed, the kid you smiled at in line. I don't even know you and I'm glad you're alive.


	3. Chapter 3

Padfoot woke up with first light, alert, and Sirius shifted back, brushing soil off of his jeans and out of his hair. No longer safe in Padfoot’s brain, memories of last night came flooding back in attempting to drown Sirius in fear. It hadn’t been a confession, not precisely, but it was closer to that than anything else and Remus hadn’t said anything.

The terror was ice cold as it sobered Sirius right up, the fear that he’d finally shown Remus the awful mess roiling inside of him and that Remus had wanted nothing to do with it. And why would Remus, Sirius figured, want someone who claimed to be his friend but still hadn’t known, hadn’t the slightest clue that Moony was hurting so awfully, so terribly that it had seemed better to not even keep trying. Some fucking friend.

Sirius forced himself to breathe and glanced over at the rising sun. It looked just past six and it would be worse, Sirius thought, to try and explain to the others where he’d been if he wasn’t in the cottage when they woke up. 

Gingerly he made his way back up the hill, through the dew-wet grass and let himself in through the kitchen door. The Marauders were all asleep when he crept into Remus’s room, Peter snuffling slightly and James sprawled on his back, legs spread out like a starfish into the empty space meant for Sirius. Remus was asleep too, his lashes a black shadow against the deep purple rings under his eyes, and Sirius watched him twitch in his sleep for a moment from the doorway before he picked his way into the room, peeled off his jeans, and lay down as silently as he could next to James, curled up against the edge of the mattress.

Hours seemed to go by, with Sirius just watching the light move through the open windows and across the white walls as he shuffled between the same three images- Remus lying still in the grass, the stitches in his wrists torn, Remus sitting on the rock, watching Sirius with an open mouth, and Remus, some undetermined time in the future, telling Sirius he couldn’t be his friend anymore, couldn’t associate with someone so embarrassingly obsessed with him but who somehow still had failed him- until at last the sun shone strong enough that James stirred beside him and Sirius followed the motion of his morning stretch, faking wakefulness.

“Morning Pads,” James croaked out, rubbing sleep from his eyes. His hair looked like he’d stuck a finger in an electrical outlet. “You’ve got dirt on your face, were you out last night?

“No I-” Sirius’s heart froze, “I must have just had it on my hand before I went to bed.”

“Gross,” James said casually, and he twisted his waist until Sirius heard an audible pop before he jumped up and then onto the bed with a grand cry of, “Wake up you lazy sods.”

“It’s unholy how much energy you have in the mornings,” Remus grumbled into his pillow. The sound of his voice had Sirius’s gut twisting itself into knots and he stayed facing the wall, scared to even look over. 

“It’s in direct proportion to how much of an old man you are, my moonykins,” James crowed, and Peter laughed, pushing his way out of the bed.

“You let Sirius sleep,” Peter noticed, and Sirius stood quickly before anyone could respond.

“Not sleeping, just resting my eyes, my good man,” he said, looking anywhere but at Remus. “And I call first shower.”

“No you don’t-” James yelled but Sirius was already bolting from the room and up the hall to the bathroom, shutting the door behind him with a slam before sinking slowly to the tile floor. It was going to be a miserably long day.

Sirius thought he was hiding it well. He joked with Peter and Hope through breakfast, and he even volunteered to do the washing up just so he didn’t have to stay at the table, carefully avoiding Remus’s eyes. After they ate, the four of them trooped out to the garden to play a bit of quidditch and Sirius paired himself with Peter this time, trying not to hit the bludgers with any extra aggression but he couldn’t help flinching every time Remus flew a bit too close. Still, he made himself loud, he was careful not to stop talking, but he should have known he couldn’t fool James, who pulled him aside after Hope had called out that lunch was ready and the others had made their way inside.

“Did you have a fight with Moony last night?” James asked, still holding Sirius’s arm from where he’d grabbed it and said they’d clean up the quidditch balls and be inside in a minute.

“No, what the hell?” Sirius said, shrugging James off and holding himself at a distance.

“Then what’s going on between the two of you?” James insisted. “And don’t say-”

“Nothing-”

“I have eyes,” James cut him off. “In case you forgot, Black,” and Sirius was only “Black” when he was in trouble, “we came here to cheer Moony up, not antagonize him-”

“I haven’t done shit, Prongs-”

“Make it right,” James said firmly, cutting Sirius off with a glare. “I’ll make sure Wormy gets the message; we’ll give you two time alone. You don’t want to tell me what’s going on, fine. Just fix it.”

James paused to push his glasses back up his nose. Sirius didn’t know when it had happened, couldn’t pinpoint the day, but somehow, sometime in the last year or maybe just this last summer, James had grown up in ways the rest of them were still only pretending. Sirius would never admit it, but maturity suited Potter. They called Remus the responsible one, but James had been taking more and more of that on himself, easing the tensions between Marauders whenever there was a fight, cleaning up after pranks. Sirius still felt as if he was wheeling into the future with his eyes closed, but James seemed more and more certain of where he was headed. Where they were all headed.

“Yeah alight,” Sirius grumbled, and James reached out to ruffle his hair, which Sirius pushed him for, which turned into them tussling in the backyard for several minutes until James- fucking quidditch muscles, Sirius sneered- got the upper hand and Sirius was forced to tap out.

“We should do another bonfire tonight,” James suggested once they were done with lunch and had come back outside to lay around the backyard, the sun making them lazy. Sirius should have known that Potter would waste no time putting his threats into action. “That was fun, the first night.”

“We don’t have any more beer,” Remus said from the other side of the grass. He hadn’t spoken much today, and only once to Sirius, at lunch, asking him to pass the bread. They had yet to make eye contact.

“So Wormy and I can fly into town and buy some more,” James offered. “You and Sirius should go get firewood, we don’t have enough.”

“Don’t you think I should go, handle the Muggle money-” Remus tried but James with a plan was impossible to stop.

“Peter took Muggle Studies, he knows coins,” James steamrolled over him. “And besides, you know the woods best. Great, so it’s settled then, Wormy get your broom.”

Sirius had known it was coming, had certainly gotten more warning about it than Remus, but it still curled the pit of his stomach in terror to watch James and Peter take off on their brooms, promising to hide them far enough away from the village and walk in, before he was left alone in the yard with Remus. Their eyes met and then sprang apart and it was Remus, naturally, who cleared his throat and said, “C’mon, let’s go,” before ushering them both into the forest.

Even midday, the tree cover was dense enough that the forest felt cool and a bit muggy, dark as if it was nearly twilight. Remus had his hands stuffed into the pockets of his acid washed jeans and he’d worn another long-sleeve top today, as if they all hadn’t seen the new scars just yesterday morning.

Sirius wasn’t sure how long they could walk in silence, a solid ten paces from each other, but Remus seemed capable of doing this all day and it was Sirius who would have to face James’s wrath later if they came back and this wasn’t settled- a wrath that was scarier than nearly anything Remus could throw at him- and so it was Sirius who finally spoke up as they paused by the base of a fallen tree to break off some of the thinner branches. 

“I’m sorry,” Sirius blurted out, staring straight at the logs, and he saw Remus in his periphery stumble a bit.

“What are you sorry for?” Remus asked, his voice mild. Sirius hated him, he really did, that was the emotion that bubbled deep within his bones he was sure of it.

“Oh fuck off, I’m trying okay?” Sirius said and there was silence for a moment after that. Sirius was fairly sure telling someone to fuck off was a piss-poor apology strategy and with a sigh he tried again.

“I didn’t mean to...to yell at you. Last night,” he murmured. All of the branches he’d found were still too fresh and wet inside, they wouldn’t burn well. Evidently Remus was having the same luck because they stood up around the same time and both began walking again, still searching. It was easier to talk while walking, Sirius found, when he didn’t have to make eye contact and when he could almost be talking aloud to himself.

“Me neither,” Remus said after a while, and Sirius nodded, unsure if Remus was even looking.

“And I didn’t mean to- to scare you, or anything,” Sirius said, unsure why. “I’m sorry about that too.”

Remus didn’t respond for several minutes, the crunch of leaves and grass beneath their feet the only sound between them. The urge to run was strong, stronger even that it was last night, but that would hardly make for an apology, Sirius figured. He told himself he could handle whatever came next, even if Remus said something awful or called him a poof, which wasn’t a very Remus thing to do, he knew, but it’d be better than this silence. 

“Did you mean it?” Remus asked at last, so softly the question was nearly lost to the woods. He didn’t clarify what “it” was; he didn’t have to. Sirius couldn’t look at him.

“Yeah, course I did,” he said, heart somewhere in the vicinity of his mouth.

At the last moment, his courage betrayed him and he quickly added, “You’re all my whole world, you know that. You, James, Peter.”

“Of course,” Remus nodded and Sirius knew he must be imagining the flash of disappointment in Remus’s eyes, the quick tightening of Remus’s hands into fists before he relaxed them. 

They walked for a few more moments in silence, Sirius cursing his cowardice, his fear, before he remembered James’s orders and swallowed roughly, breathing out fast before stopping just in front of Remus.

“No, look, I mean-” Sirius tried, and failed, words impossible to string together. Remus watched him and this time there was no mistaking the look in his eyes- fear and something like hope- and it was just exactly how Sirius felt- enough that Sirius reached out and caught Remus’s left hand in his own. 

Sirius had never had cause to examine Remus’s hands, but he found the one in his to be soft and dry, Remus’s fingers taunt with calluses and bespeckled with little brown freckles, his nails short and clean. By the time Sirius summoned the guts to look away from their joined hands and back up to Remus’s face, he found Remus watching him, quiet and surprised, but not pulling away. Just holding back.

All of the twisting at the core of him, all of the bubbling and rumbling and white vipers of pain that had wound their way around his insides all summer quieted as Sirius looked at their joined hands, as he let his thumb brush slowly, back and forth, against the soft skin of Remus’s own thumb. It was an unconscious gesture, he wasn’t even sure why he wanted to, but he could have sworn with confidence in that moment that somehow, miraculously, just the touch of Remus’s skin had set everything inside of him to rights.

When Remus spoke, it was a shock of noise in the silence.

“You know this doesn’t-” Remus started, and it was a relief to hear him stutter, for Sirius to know this fear wasn’t his alone. “This doesn’t change- change anything, yeah? Just cause you, you- you held my hand doesn’t mean I’ll never want to kill myself-”

“I know,” Sirius cut in, in part just to keep from hearing Remus say those words, but just as much in part because it was true. “I may have an ego the size of Minny’s ample buxom backside, Moony, but even I don’t think I have that kind of power.”

Remus laughed. “You do think a lot of yourself.”

“I’m pretty wonderful,” Sirius laughed back, and Remus watched him.

“Yeah,” he said, the joke gone from his voice, his eyes never leaving Sirius’s, “Yeah, you are.”

They were still holding hands and so it was the easiest thing in the world just to lean forward and kiss Remus right there, at the corner of his mouth. It was a dry kiss, the kind you’d give to an aunt, but Sirius shivered with it, and he pulled back to find Remus blinking his eyes open with those absurdly long lashes, before they both broke into identical, small smiles.

Sirius hated to be the one to spoil it all but he knew he had to say everything now, or he’d never say it. Squeezing Remus’s hand for some sort of inner strength, Sirius attempted to put it all into words, all the half-pieced arguments he’d agonized over this morning when he’d still thought Remus might never speak to him again.

“I can’t stop you, yeah. I know that,” he tried to explain and clever Remus, patient Remus, watched him and let him muddle through it. “And I won’t ever get it. Like, all of it. But you could try and tell me. I’m good at listening, and I nod in the right places, and sometimes I think of things to try that you don’t.”

“Sirius-”

“I didn’t know it was this bad, Moony,” Sirius said, and he had to pause and blink a few times before he could go on. “Not till last night. And maybe that means I need to get better at asking the right questions. But you also have to tell me when it’s getting bad. That’s what mates do.”

Sirius was prepared to have to argue this point, but Remus only nodded. Sirius watched him swallow, felt his hand clench inside of Sirius’s.

“I never want to bother you,” Remus said, his voice a bit hoarse. “For you to have to think about all the shit I think about-”

“I think about you all the time,” Sirius confessed, and it was scarier than holding hands, scarier than the small kiss they’d shared. The urge to qualify was strong, to include Peter and James again, but Sirius bit it back down, knowing this was the most important thing he’d ever done.

“Whether you ‘bother’ me or not, I’m always thinking about you. Least you could do is make sure I’m thinking about the real stuff. And I know I can’t fix it, but I can help.” Sirius laughed a little. “Last time I helped, I came up with a really good idea,” he reminded Remus, wrangling his ears the way Padfoot did, and Remus chuckled. Sirius pretended not to notice Remus’s eyes were wet. He was pretty sure his were as well.

“Alright,” Remus said. The closest anyone could get to a Moony promise. “I’ll try, I will. Sometimes- it can be hard, sometimes, to talk about it-”

“Yeah, course,” Sirius nodded quickly, grateful to have gotten even this much out of Remus.

“-but you’re right,” Remus said. “You’re my friend. You all are. I get inside my head sometimes, I forget- but you’re right.”

“Sorry, I’m what?” Sirius couldn’t help but tease, and Remus began to turn a soft pink.

“Shut up, Black.”

“No wait, I didn't quite hear. Did you say I’m right?” 

“Fuck you,” Remus bit out, but he was smiling the widest he’d smiled since they’d come to Wales.

By the time they’d reached the clearing near the cottage, they’d already let go of each others’ hands, but they still walked close enough that James nodded at Sirius as they appeared in view, satisfied that the fight had been resolved. Remus tumbled down an armful of firewood they’d stopped to collect, and Peter rushed out of the house to announce that they’d tried to pay with too much money in the village and were now in possession of six full cases of beer.


	4. Chapter 4

Wormtail, blessed pyromaniac that he was, had gotten a bonfire of unbelievable proportions going out on the back lawn. James had insisted Hope join them for a bit and help them through the mountain of beer, and she’d gotten a bit misty-eyed talking about the chickens they used to keep on the property before telling over a bawdy tale about an old neighbor that had James, Sirius, and Peter howling while Remus blushed red all over and begged her to stop.

Since she’d gone off to bed, having done her part to get them through two cases, the wild rumpus had only gotten more raucous. James- having consumed a case on his own- had stripped down to his kecks and declared himself emperor of the bonfire, with an equally shirtless Peter happy to comply. Sirius, naturally, had been given no choice but to challenge and had stripped as well to wrestle with James in the night-damp grass until Remus decreed they were getting too close to the fire and they should stop being such bloody idiots.

Another case had fallen by the time they were all gathered back around the fire, adding outrageous verses to “Hoggy Warty Hogwarts,” with the unspoken goal to most scandalize Peter. James had nearly won it with an ode to Minny’s knickers, but Remus came for the steal with a beautifully-crafted metaphor that amounted to Slughorn and Sprout getting at it on the head teachers’ table. James had rushed to cover Peter’s ears and Sirius mockingly crawled over to swear allegiance to Remus’s filthy mind and so by the time they cracked open the sixth case that was the order they found themselves around the fire- Peter with his head on James’s shoulder, James resting his feet in Sirius’s lap and demanding a foot rub as was his due as rightful fire king, and Sirius, while attempting to make it seem entirely accidental, sitting close enough to Remus that they could feel the heat of each other just as strong as the fire. 

“This is the year, lads,” James declared, shifting in the grass and Sirius dug his thumb into the arch of James’s left foot. “We have to finish that bloody map.”

“I swear they add new wings every year,” Remus swore and it took everything Sirius had not to melt into the husk of his voice. Now that it was all out between them, and now they had actually kissed, a kiss that despite being dryer and more proper than any of the snogs Sirius had exchanged with Mary last term behind Greenhouse Four, was still somehow the best kiss kiss of his life, it felt as if every brush of their hands as they reached for a beer, every knock of their knees might utterly destroy him. 

“I told you, the trick is in mapping the movements, not the rooms,” James tried to explain, petting at the back of Peter’s head.

“You’re drunk, James,” Remus said affectionately.

“This may be true, Remy darling, but I am also a genius.”

“I wouldn’t-”

“And in my drunken genius, a world of understanding has opened itself up to me, such that I can now see- excuse me a second,” James said, before leaning off to his right to vomit neatly into the grass. Peter did not even stir.

“James is right,” Sirius said, while leaning back away from James’s sick and, conveniently, further onto Remus’s left arm. “If the map can move like the portraits do, then it can change when the castle changes.”

“You’re talking about using the same spellwork as we do for paintings?” Remus asked and Sirius could feel the vibrations of his voice through where they were pressed together- from his spine through the ends of his fingertips.

“Why not?” Sirius asked. “In a way, we’re just painting the castle.”

“That’s brilliant,” Remus murmured and Sirius finally turned just enough to look at him, at the way his lips hung open, wet and full, his eyes watching Sirius’s in the firelight.

“Very sorry to interrupt but I think Wormy might have peed a little,” James said, and that was the end of the bonfire.

After Peter had been roused and washed, after they’d all crowded into the bathroom together to take turns puking a bit and brushing their teeth, once goodnights had been said across the room and James and Peter were undeniably asleep, the two of them made no pretense of sneaking off together, nodding at each other from across the room in the dark before picking their way downstairs and out the back door and nearly running to what Sirius affectionately thought of now as ‘their spot’ along the edge of the property. Remus sat down on his rock at once and Sirius stood there in the black of the night for a long moment before gingerly sitting himself down right beside Remus on the same rock, their thighs flush against each other, his heart hammering wildly in his chest at his own daring.

Remus said not a word, but with one hand he fished out a joint he had rolled sometime that day and with the other he let his palm rest, just so, on the inner part of Sirius's upper thigh. It was all Sirius could do not to jolt but instead to breath into the touch, letting it ooze slowly into his bones until he could move past the fear and feel the pleasure of it, molten at the core.

Remus put the joint in Sirius’s mouth and fetched his lighter from his pocket without moving his other hand. He lit the joint, giving himself a bit of leverage by pressing himself more firmly into Sirius’s side and legs, and Sirius almost forgot to inhale to get the flame started. They smoked like that for an indeterminable amount of minutes, Sirius passing the joint from his right hand to Remus’s left, with Remus’s right hand itself seemingly occupied with just resting on Sirius's inner thigh, occasionally letting one of his fingers run up and down the inseam of Sirius’s jeans as if testing the stitching. Sirius felt he might as well have been naked, for all his body was reacting as if Remus’s hand was on his bare skin, pulse practically jumping against Remus's fingertips, but brave as Sirius had been since nearly sunrise, he wasn’t brave enough to do more than this- to sit and feel Remus against the length of him, Remus nearly inside his lungs, their lips touching-by-proxy as they smoked their way down to the filter. 

When it was finished, Remus ground the joint out against the side of the rock just to be sure and tossed the pinched end into the vast darkness of the field. And then, as if on some unspoken cue, they both turned finally to face each other.

“We don’t-”

“I’ve never-” Sirius found himself confessing and Remus paused to watch him.

“Mary?” Remus asked and Sirius shook his head. If it had been James or Peter, he might have lied.

“Just snogged a few times,” Sirius said. “You?”

“No,” Remus said and Sirius wanted to ask what he meant- no he’d never done more than snogging or no he’d never even snogged anyone before- but if it was the latter he didn’t want to embarrass Moony. “Seen a lot of magazines, though.”

Sirius laughed. “Gid’s got moving ones, you ever nick those?”

“Who do you think helped him smuggle them in?” Remus teased and Sirius was vaguely sure he was in love with him and they’d barely even kissed yet. 

“Can’t be that hard,” Sirius reasoned out loud, belaying his own jackrabbit pulse and his trembling hands. “Know what to do with myself well enough and it’s the same equipment.”

“Why the fuck are we talking about it instead of doing it, then?” Remus asked, prolonging the conversation as he did so and Sirius smiled at him under the shedding moon.

“Nervous, I guess,” he said and Remus smiled back and let his face drift ever closer to Sirius’s, both of them closing their eyes so they wouldn’t see who kissed who first. 

Their mouths were wet and a little relaxed from the weed and from the beer earlier and so they slid together easier than before, almost too easily, and Sirius moaned with it despite himself. It was embarrassing but it emboldened Remus, it seemed, enough for him to lick his way into Sirius’s mouth and they snogged for what felt like hours or minutes, time vanishing into the softness of Remus’s lips against his and the way his hair tangled around Sirius’s fingers as he tried somehow to pull them closer.

Unthinking, Sirius bit into Remus’s bottom lip, and Remus’s right hand tightened against his thigh and kissing was not nearly enough for how much Sirius felt set ablaze, how much he wanted to crawl inside of Remus and become something other than himself, something slippery and lost and hedonistic. He scrambled at the zip of Remus’s Levi's just as Remus finally moved his hand to do the same at the button of Sirius’s jeans and despite the darkness and their vague lack of sobriety, they found their way inside and yes the equipment was the same but the angle was all wrong and Sirius was sure he was messing it all up, unlike Remus who was doing something with the twist of his wrist that made Sirius want to cry and had him panting into their still-connected mouths, lost in the flow of what was building between them. Remus pressed him a little against the rock and Sirius arched his back, not wanting to be any farther away and it was too hard to kiss now, there was not art to it, so Sirius moved his head to the juncture of Remus’s neck and shoulder and bit down there, just to have something to hold onto.

Remus keened and tightened his grip and a sober Sirius would have tried to hang on for a little longer but this Sirius now had given himself up to how good everything felt, how absurdly happy and lost in the calluses of Remus’s thumb he was that he let himself crest and white out. Remus watched him go and murmured “just like that, look at you.” Eventually, Sirius got himself together enough to try and mirror whatever Remus had done to him, and it was clear that Remus had just been doing what worked for himself personally because as soon as Sirius let his wrist twist and his grip tighten same as Remus had done, Remus was following him down, mouth leaving wet stains all along Sirius’s jaw and they gasped together and dangled for one perfect moment on the intertwined edge. 

“God, if I knew,” Remus stumbled out when they could finally speak, wheezing a little and out of breath, “-if I knew it would get me a handjob, I would’ve tried to off myself ages ago.”

“Are we joking about it now?” Sirius asked, out of breath himself and so full of oxytocin that Remus’s casual reference barely shook him.

“Better than not talking about it at all, I guess,” Remus shrugged, moving his body further into the puddle of Sirius beneath him, and Sirius had to concede that one.

When at last it felt like they were getting enough oxygen, they withdrew their hands slowly, laughing to pretend they weren’t a bit disgusted at the sticky aftermath. It would be easier, Sirius thought, when they were back at Hogwarts and could just vanish the mess away and what a heady thought to imagine doing this again behind the thick curtains of Sirius’s bed, aided with silencing charms, Remus’s spine arching off the soft sheets and the gold of Gryffindor tower in his hair. Maybe they’d managed to get undressed next time, but just the thought of that had Sirius twitching again and he was too sensitive still to sit with it for long. 

Remus wiped his hand on the side of the rock before he fished out the matchbox where he kept spare papers and tobacco and began rolling them a cigarette. Sirius watched the nimble movements of his hands, talented hands he had just been the direct beneficiary of, and without seeing his own face Sirius knew he was grinning like a madman.

“I can barely roll that well in the light,” Sirius offered a soft praise, and Remus only lifted one eyebrow and focused on his task. He lit the cigarette in his own mouth and inhaled quickly before passing it to Sirius and leaning back to fall into the great dome of stars above them.

“Are you going to tell James?” Remus asked after they had smoked a while in breathless silence, and Sirius knew what Remus was asking even if he wouldn’t say it- _is this a permanent thing or just the once?_

Sirius let himself feel the tobacco in his lungs, the gentle dizziness of nicotine, before he passed it back and nodded, knowing Remus was watching him even if he was pretending he wasn’t. It hadn’t even been a question.

“Soon,” Sirius promised. “Wanna wait a bit so it doesn’t look like-”

“Like you seduced me while I was vulnerable?” Remus filled in. For a moment Sirius was flooded with fear that, in truth, that was what had happened, but then he heard Remus chuckle and he looked over to find him smiling at Sirius, the white of his teeth visible in the moonlight.

Sirius smiled back. “Little does he know I was the one being seduced,” he joked and only once he said it did Sirius realize it was true. He thought about all their quiet moments the last year, the book sharing and the bedtime secrets and it was putting the last piece in a large puzzle. It seemed imperative that Remus know this at once and so Sirius fought past his tobacco and sex fatigue to sit up and look down at Remus with as much serious Siriusness he could muster.

“This would have happened- we would have gotten here no matter what, Moons,” he said and he watched Remus watch him. “This doesn’t have to do with...well it does but not directly, you know, it’s not _because-_ ”

“Okay,” Remus said, saving him, and Sirius saw in his eyes that he had needed to explain that. Remus, who was the best of all of them but refused to see it, who sometimes had to be told straight he was loved and he mattered not in spite but because. 

Remus, who had very nearly not been here to hear Sirius say it. 

“I’m really fucking glad you’re alive, Moony,” Sirius said now and Remus blinked and let Sirius see his eyes grow wet and didn’t hide them the way he always did. 

“It’s not always this good,” Remus managed, voice thick, and Sirius understood.

There was nothing to be said then, nothing that both mattered and was true, and so instead Sirius let himself lay back down on the rock and rested his head against Moony’s chest, where his heart beat clear and steady, pumping blood to all of his good and precious veins, and felt Remus lift his hand to thread it through Sirius’s hair, scratching gently at the shell of his ear.

  
  


Lyall Lupin was set to return on the fifth of August, and so on the third James suggested at breakfast that Remus come join them at the Potters for the rest of summer break. 

“Your father will be sad to miss you,” Hope said, more out of expectation than anything, but she raised no further objection.

Remus leaned towards her in his chair, not whispering but still keeping his voice low as he asked, “You won’t- tell him, yeah?”

“Not if you don’t want me to,” Hope promised, as the rest of the Marauders politely became engrossed in their eggs and mash, keeping their eyes down from the sight of Hope petting Remus’s cheek just lightly, murmuring, “-you know he means well, Rem, he just doesn’t know how-”

By the end of the afternoon, James had reconnected the fireplace to the floo network and the boys had trooped upstairs to help Remus pack his trunks for the rest of August. 

“You’ve got too many books, Moony,” Peter said from the floor where he was struggling to fit an armful of old tomes into Remus’s bag.

“Put whatever you can’t fit in my bag,” Sirius offered and Remus looked over from his closet to smile at Sirius on the floor in a way that made Sirius feel warm all over.

They hadn’t done much, since that night on the edge of the woods. They hadn’t had the time, or the privacy. Sirius was surprised to find he didn’t mind, and then surprised at himself for thinking he would. James and Peter were still his best friends, even if he was kissing Moony now- or more than kissing. The night before, Remus had rolled his joints while the four of them were drinking on the back porch, and later on all four of them had trooped down to the rocks and smoked together, Peter getting so high he’d shifted into the rat without meaning to and had been too fucked up to figure out how to shift back. It had been the funniest thing Sirius had seen in a long time.

“Do you think you’ll come with us straight to the train, in September?” James asked and Remus shook his head.

“I’ll want to say goodbye, before,” he said. “And if my da’s gone we can all do August’s moon here.”

“Would be fun to have another moon in the forest,” Peter agreed. “Much nicer than the shack.”

“So we don’t need to pack your robes,” James said, tossing a few shirts from Remus’s chest of drawers into an empty suitcase.

“No, and I can pack myself, you know,” Remus said, laughing a bit.

Peter lifted his head from the bookshelf. “Why would you, if we can help you?” he asked and Sirius looked quickly to catch Remus’s face. He looked surprised, for a beat, and then smiled.

“Guess you’re right, Worm,” Remus said, rubbing at his wrists. Sometime between last night and this morning, Remus had taken off the bandages and he stood for the first time that summer in an oversized t-shirt. Sirius didn’t have to look to know the scars were still there; he’d felt them underneath his thumb late last night-or maybe early morning- when he’d snuck out of the bedroom to pee and the bathroom door had opened while he was washing his hands for Remus to slink in and pin him against the sink, kissing Sirius like he’d been waiting to do it all day. But they barely stuck out from the skin and looked much like the rest of Remus’s scars. White, a little worn, and only heartbreaking if you thought about them for too long.

Just thinking about that early morning in the bathroom made Sirius twitchy and flushed, liable to get lost in the way Remus’s legs had clenched on either side of Sirius’s waist as he’d nipped at his earlobe in the semi-darkness. “I’m gonna go check if we left anything outside,” Sirius volunteered, mostly to get himself moving and out of the room, and ran out and down the stairs before he could give himself away with an ill-timed erection.

The Lupin’s backyard was cool now in the second half of the day, with rain lurking on the horizon. Sirius wandered around in the grass for a few minutes, checking if they’d dropped anything and finding a book James had been reading yesterday and a quill he figured was Peter’s from the chewed-up end. He had his arms full with a cardigan of Remus’s and a chocolate frog card when Remus himself came out the back door and stepped towards him.

“Find anything good?” Remus asked and Sirius wordlessly held out his bounty. Remus took his cardigan and slipped it on, and Sirius held his tongue about how it made Moony look close to eighty. 

“The others are just about ready to go,” Remus said, looking over his shoulder a second at the house. “You need to do anything before we leave?”

Sirius shook his head. “It’ll be nice to be at the Potters’,” he said. Maybe Remus was right; maybe it was time for him to start believing James’s mum when she told him that he was an adult and could do what he thought best but that their home would always be open to him, for as long as he wanted to stay. 

“It was nice to be here,” Sirius added, and Remus looked at him. 

“You only think that because you haven’t been here very long,” Remus said, and Sirius wanted to kiss him one last time in his own backyard. He wasn’t brave enough to, not with the sun out and James or Peter liable to walk through the back door at any minute. But he wanted to, badly enough that he nearly did it anyway. 

“Nice location, good food,” Sirius said, flashing his teeth. “Brilliant company. What’s not to like?”

Remus smiled back at him like he knew what Sirius wanted and he wanted it too. Sirius figured he would tell James and Peter when they got to the Potters, or maybe once they’d settled in. He didn’t like having secrets from them, but still it was nice to feel- even for a little bit- like Remus was his, like they had built a little world together that no one else could touch.

The sun was hidden enough by the rainclouds that they could see the moon, just the outline of it, hanging heavy against the sky and waxing its way to new. 

“Feeling okay?” Sirius asked and Remus opened his mouth to say _fine_ , Sirius could see his lips beginning the shape of it, before he swallowed.

“Bones a little sore,” he confessed, and Sirius shifted the bundle of items in his arms so he could reach out his left hand and link his pinky with Remus’s, their fingers lost a bit in the oversized wrists of Remus’s cardigan.

“Potters will have something for that,” Sirius speculated. “I’ll ask when we get there.”

“Thank you,” Remus said, and it was better than kissing him, Sirius thought, to get to stand on the other end of a gaze like that.

The air hung heavy with the coming storm and tasted thick and clean. Sirius breathed it into his lungs, felt Remus do the same, and they took another minute out behind the house, pinkies linked, watching one another, before the first drop of rain began to fall and they hurried inside to finish packing.


End file.
